Unofficial What are you Reading Thread?

[Cain]

Yeah, Dolan is a fan of the Byronic heroes and artists, to say the least.  For example, his article in the eXile on Eddie Little.

[Cain]

Ah, here is his excellent biography on Byron: http://www.exile.ru/articles/detail.php?ARTICLE_ID=8068&IBLOCK_ID=35

"Polidori once asked Byron what, besides scribble verses, he could do better than Polidori himself. Byron icily replied: 'Three things. First, I can hit with a pistol the keyhole of that door. Secondly, I can swim across that river to yonder point. And thirdly, I can give you a damned good thrashing.'"

OK, somebody go find a black goat somewhere, sharpen me a steak knife, and buy us some spray paint for a pentagram, 'cause we're gonna resurrect us a champion who can kick the necessary ignorant Protestant ass and make it look easy.

And lucky for you, folks, I've pre-selected us a perfect demon: George Gordon, Lord Byron. He's dead at the moment, but that's a minor problem. Like his avatar, Prometheus, Byron can die and come back as often as you need him. Hell, he likes getting killed; he was a fighter. Single-handed, he took on the Wordsworth gang and kicked the sticks they had jammed up their asses right up through their teeth.

Byron's time was like ours, a scared time, a period of reaction and retreat. His England ran the world without knowing or wanting to know a thing about it, just like our America. Our climate is in fact the same nasty Wordsworthian weather Byron fought all his life: humorless, sanctimonious, xenophobic, factional, and cruel. He spent his life firing back at that world in a long fighting retreat that saw him always heading South and East, away from "the moral North" where the Wordsworthian consensus was metastasizing.

And that, of course, is why Byron was adored in Europe but snubbed in England and America. He was everything Wordsworth's gang was not. They were utterly humorless-a Romanticist once told me that "there are three jokes in Wordsworth, or so they say...but I can't recall them."

[LMNO]

PS - thanks for the Duquette PDF, Cain.

[Cain]

Not a problem.

[e]

I adored Becky, unfortunately Thackerey didn't. But I am not sure if he liked anybody at all or was just making some kind of point about society and the world at general. Oh, and Dolan loves bitching about Wordsworth. But as he loves bitching about anybody who is not Byron I could argue that I was not totally off the mark.

Probably that.

[e]

Ah, here is his excellent biography on Byron: http://www.exile.ru/articles/detail.php?ARTICLE_ID=8068&IBLOCK_ID=35

"Polidori once asked Byron what, besides scribble verses, he could do better than Polidori himself. Byron icily replied: 'Three things. First, I can hit with a pistol the keyhole of that door. Secondly, I can swim across that river to yonder point. And thirdly, I can give you a damned good thrashing.'"

OK, somebody go find a black goat somewhere, sharpen me a steak knife, and buy us some spray paint for a pentagram, 'cause we're gonna resurrect us a champion who can kick the necessary ignorant Protestant ass and make it look easy.

And lucky for you, folks, I've pre-selected us a perfect demon: George Gordon, Lord Byron. He's dead at the moment, but that's a minor problem. Like his avatar, Prometheus, Byron can die and come back as often as you need him. Hell, he likes getting killed; he was a fighter. Single-handed, he took on the Wordsworth gang and kicked the sticks they had jammed up their asses right up through their teeth.

Byron's time was like ours, a scared time, a period of reaction and retreat. His England ran the world without knowing or wanting to know a thing about it, just like our America. Our climate is in fact the same nasty Wordsworthian weather Byron fought all his life: humorless, sanctimonious, xenophobic, factional, and cruel. He spent his life firing back at that world in a long fighting retreat that saw him always heading South and East, away from "the moral North" where the Wordsworthian consensus was metastasizing.

And that, of course, is why Byron was adored in Europe but snubbed in England and America. He was everything Wordsworth's gang was not. They were utterly humorless-a Romanticist once told me that "there are three jokes in Wordsworth, or so they say...but I can't recall them."

Don't forget that he was also (reputedly) into incest!

[Dido]

The Victorian sensibility repaid the compliment by smearing Byron as well as Karl Rove himself could have done it. If you know only one thing about Byron, it's probably that quote about him: "mad, bad, and dangerous to know"-or the story that he had an affair with his sister.

[Cain]

John Perkins - Confessions of an Economic Hit-Man

[hooplala]

I finished Clive Barker's "Mr. B. Gone"... what a piece of crap.

[Jasper]

I should be reading my SAT training book and math textbook.

Instead I read forums.

[Darth Cupcake]

I recently finished "Springer's Progress" by David Markson and loved it like crazy. It is full of bizarre and sex. A good combination.

[Raphaella]

I have just now got down to reading Schrodinger's cat.

[Dido]

Warrior Queens by Antonia Frazer

Awfull

[Micro Ice]

Due to fausts insistence im about halfway through The Illuminatus Trilogy.

My head now hurts. 

[Cainad (dec.)]

Due to fausts insistence im about halfway through The Illuminatus Trilogy.

My head now hurts. 

It won't go away. Ever.